Countdown

by Ruth Wind

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “You’re young, beautiful, tough, smart, and you looked like Angelina Jolie coming out of that ceiling. Every man in the audience had a hard-on—but that’s not what I want to write about. I want to write about you for all the young women who are going to think you’re fantastic.”

  Kim couldn’t help it—she snorted in appreciation for the frank language. “All right, Ms.—what was your name?”

  “Lucinda Orange.”

  “Ms. Orange, what kind of column do you write?”

  “Commentary on women’s lives and issues.”

  “And what’s your angle?”

  “You mean are you going to look good or bad in print?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, Ms. Valenti.” The woman laughed in a throaty, pleasant way. “I admire you. That I can promise you.”

  “All right. I’ll give an interview, but I need to do it when I’m fresh. Call me tomorrow at ten, at this number.” She gave her the office number.

  When she hung up from the call, she picked it up immediately and called her mother. “Hey, Ma,” she said.

  “Kim! How are you, honey? You looked terrible on TV.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You know what I mean. You were obviously injured, and you know that worries me. What happened?”

  A thudding headache began at the base of Kim’s neck. “You know, Mom, I’m really tired. I can’t face another long catalog of the whole thing tonight, but I promise I’ll let you look me over head to toe on Sunday, okay?”

  “Fair enough. Are you going to bring that gorgeous creature you were with last night? Lex, is it?”

  “Mom, he lives in Chicago.”

  “But he’s Italian, isn’t he? That would make your father so happy, and you have to admit, he’s a very nice-looking man.”

  “Yeah, and he works for the bomb squad! Not great life odds there.”

  “Oh, please,” her mother said dismissively. “No worse than a firefighter or a policeman or a sol—” She halted.

  “Or a soldier,” Kim said. “Exactly.”

  “Bomb squad is definitely better than combat soldiers.”

  Kim silently rolled her eyes. “Ma, enough. I’m tired. I am not bringing him to dinner on Sunday. I am, however, bringing my partner, Scott, because he’s missing his family and he needs some love and attention. He is not husband material. Tell my father.”

  Eileen chuckled. “All right, baby. You go get some sleep and I’ll see you on Sunday. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Kiss my dad.”

  She hung up and rubbed her eyes. What day was it, anyway? When could she sleep in? It was Thursday. Not so bad. One more day.

  The phone rang again. Kim groaned. Looking at caller ID, she saw it was—again—a Chicago number, but this time she picked up the number she’d written down for Lex and checked it. Bingo.

  Her heart leaped, flipped, squeezed. Something. It hurt. “Don’t do this, Kim,” she said to herself. “Don’t make him into something he’s not, some beautiful perfect guy.”

  On the fourth ring, she picked it up. “Hello?”

  “How you doin’, darlin’?” said a rich, deep, Southern voice.

  As if she were Pavlov’s dog, Kim’s tailbone went soft. “I’m all right, Lex. How are you?”

  “Had better days. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  She fell on the couch, covered her forehead with an arm. And she did something she almost never did with a man—she let down her guard. A little bit. “I know what you mean.”

  “You thought about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think about?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not going to sit here and feed your ego, Mr. Tanner.”

  “If I feed yours first?”

  She laughed, suddenly transported to last night, when his long fingers had been entwined with hers. “Well, if you like.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the way your shoulders look when you’re tense and worried.”

  “Oh.” Not what she’d expected.

  “And when you were all worn out the night before last, one eyelid drooped more than the other.”

  “That’s what you’ve been thinking about?”

  “And you snore. You snored before you hardly hit that bed.”

  “How is this feeding my ego, exactly?”

  “It’s not,” he said slowly. “But it’s all true. I was thinking about those things.”

  “Don’t get mushy on me, Tanner.”

  He laughed. The sound was low and wicked. “What do you want to hear, darlin’?”

  “No, it’s your turn. I was thinking about you, too. I was thinking about how—” Suddenly there were too many things in her head. The clarity of his eyes. The softness of his mouth. “You have a mouth just like Denzel Washington, you know that?”

  “Is that right. Nobody every told me that before. He’s such a big-time movie star, I guess that’s good, right?”

  “It’s good.”

  “You like my mouth, then?”

  “I do.”

  His voice dropped an octave. “You know what I’ve really been thinking about, sugar?”

  “I bet I can guess.”

  “Your bare breasts when you had that gun in your hand. Hottest damned thing I ever saw in my life.”

  “Mmm. Thought you weren’t looking?”

  “You knew I was lying, even then.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When can I see you?”

  “I thought you were going to be here next week for something.”

  “I don’t want to wait that long. How about this weekend?”

  Kim thought of his body, his vivid blue eyes—and she also felt a slight sense of panic. Too fast. Too much. “No.”

  His laughter was the last thing she expected. “I’m hanging up now, Kim. Don’t worry.”

  And he was gone.

  Chapter 15

  Friday, October 8

  Before she went to work the next morning, Kim checked e-mail from Oracle and found a message waiting.

  To: Ariadne@orcl.org

  From: Delphi@orcl.org

  Subject: Lead on-site planning

  Several sources are pointing to the possibility of a plot to destroy a bridge with a truck bomb. Major speculation that the target is either Golden Gate or Brooklyn Bridge, but some leads point to George Washington. Thanks to usual jealousy, some information has been withheld from certain agencies, which makes the connection to GW less obvious.

  Security to all major bridges nationwide has been increased, but thanks to current policies designed to keep the public in a state of fear and off the current administration’s involvement in Puerto Isla and Berzhaan, no one is taking the bridge threat seriously. Very important to discover which bridge is the target and take steps now to prevent it. Strong evidence suggests bombing slated for the upcoming Columbus Day weekend. Be advised—level four warning.

  Possible helps: Valerie Kane at CIA, 202-555-9016; Karl Gibson at New York City Police, 212-555-3173. Both have files on Mansour and truck thievery.

  Good luck.

  Delphi

  Kim had often wondered if Delphi had lost someone in the Puerto Isla debacle, when President Whitlow had sent in a SEAL force to rescue hostages who had turned out to be American drug runners. The SEALs had nearly all been killed, a massacre that should never have happened. The subject seemed to make Delphi particularly touchy.

  One thing was clear: the Oracle group wanted Whitlow out of office. Now.

  Kim made notes on the information, and stopped on the way in to work to buy a latte for herself and Scott. He was in the parking lot when she arrived, looking fresh and athletic in spite of the cold, gray day. She handed him his paper cup of nonfat, triple venti latte. “Jeez, Shepherd, you look like ‘Rocky Mountain High’ all by yourself.”

  He grinned, looking like his normal self. “Thanks. I found some things.” He waved a sheaf of papers
. “I think we’re looking at an event within just a few days.”

  Kim nodded. “Me, too.” She let him hold the door for her as she pulled out her ID. They passed through security and took an elevator to their floor and carried their briefcases into a small conference room. “I’m going to grab a couple of things from my desk,” Kim said.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna drop this coat, then check e-mail.”

  “Ten minutes, back here?”

  “Right.”

  Kim flipped her monitor on, then hit the icon to collect e-mail. While she waited for it to download, she hung up her coat, shook down her sleeves, flipped through the in-box that had collected a surprising amount of material overnight. Most of it was fact-checking documentation, hard-copy printouts of various electronic communications. A co-worker had stuck in a newspaper cartoon showing President Whitlow as a Fidel-type politician smoking a cigar called Berzhaan.

  There were several e-mails, all related to the intelligence gathered through the Q-group e-mails. Kim printed out the new e-mails collected from the cell overnight—seven of them, which was quite a lot for a twelve-hour period—and took them to the small conference room. Since they’d broken the code, the e-mails were intercepted, translated, then deciphered before Kim received them. She insisted upon receiving the originals, as well, not content to trust others with translation.

  As she waited for Scott, she highlighted phrases that seemed important.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” said a voice from behind her.

  The voice. Kim spun around, sure she wasn’t hearing correctly.

  But there he was. Lex, cleanly shaved, dressed in black slacks, black long-sleeved shirt, tie.

  He looked very, very good.

  Kim stood up. Her hands felt awkward, so she tried to put them in the back pockets of her jeans, but she was wearing a skirt. “Lex! What are you doing here?”

  “Been assigned to help.”

  “Us?”

  “This case. They’re thinking it’s a whole lot of explosives. Fourteen moving vans have been stolen in the past three weeks.”

  “Moving vans.” Kim blinked, trying to imagine what a moving van full of explosives could do to a bridge.

  From behind him, Scott hustled in, carrying a box of files. “Hey,” he said, lifting his chin toward Lex. “You the new guy? Oh—hey. You’re the FBI guy.”

  Next to Scott’s hale outdoorsy look, Lex looked ethnic and lean, a coyote next to a big fluffy St. Bernard. “Lex Tanner,” he said, extending a hand. “You must be Scott.”

  “Good to meet you.”

  Kim let go of a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” She sat down and pulled out her notes. “We’ve got moving vans. Bridges. Mansour is still on the loose, with pretty serious financial backing.”

  “Have we figured out who is bankrolling this guy anyway?”

  “Not yet. He’s anti-CIA and -U.S.A. and anti-Kemini, so I’d put my money on the usual suspects. Islamic extremists, disgruntled rich Berzhaanians who want the Keminis squashed.”

  Lex scowled. “But the Chicago cell seems to be richer than usual. The kind of money which usually only comes from two kinds of vice, either drugs or arms deals.”

  Kim thought of the nonnative Arabic speaker at the television station. “There was definitely a non-Arab at the station. He’s one of the guys that got away with Mansour. The station manager was also involved somehow, so there’s an American connection.”

  Scott swore.

  “Where there’s money to be made,” Kim said with a shrug, “there’s bound to be people wanting to make it. It’s something we can research a little more.” She shifted gears. “Scott, did you decide which of the e-mail-loop guys might be Mansour? Maybe we can figure out some clues to his whereabouts from that.”

  “You might want to take a look. You’re better at some of the subtle stuff.” He pulled out a yellow tablet with scribbles on it. “I do have some ideas on the bridge that might be targeted, however. The three that seem to generate the most interest from terrorist types are the famous ones—” he ticked them off on his fingers “—Golden Gate, Brooklyn and George Washington.”

  Kim nodded, pleased that she wasn’t the one to bring up the George Washington Bridge.

  “I also looked up whatever major bridges might be targeted in the heartland—over the Missouri and Mississippi, any bridges along Interstate Highways, any arteries into military bases, that kind of thing. A couple important ones came up—the 1-40 Mississippi River Bridge in Memphis; the Houston Ship Channel Bridge, the Seattle I-90 to Mercer Island.”

  He pulled out pictures of the bridges, spread them in a row across the top of the table. “This is where you come in, Tanner, and why I requested you. How do you blow up a bridge? Which of these bridges is a good target and which ones aren’t worth the trouble?”

  Lex stood up, poked one of the pictures. “The Memphis bridge is a beauty,” he drawled. “But she’s built to withstand a level 7 earthquake, so she’d be hard to bring down completely.”

  “Earthquakes in Memphis?” Kim said.

  “One of the most dangerous fault lines in the country is right through that Mississippi farmland.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s not as unstable as the San Andreas, but it’s serious.”

  “Does that kick out the Golden Gate, too, then?” Scott asked.

  “I wouldn’t rule it out, just because it’s so symbolic, so visible, but she’d probably hold up—she’s been retrofitted to withstand an 8.3,” Lex said.

  “How do you know this stuff?” Kim asked.

  “This isn’t the first time terrorists have made noises about American bridges. I’ve made it my business to find out what I can,” Lex said. “There are ways to bring almost anything down if you have enough explosives—but some bridges are more interesting than others.”

  “Right.” Kim frowned. “Terrorists want the most bang for the buck, right? So, the busiest bridges? The ones that would disrupt commerce most severely?”

  Scott said, “But think about 9/11. It was a hit designed to take out a lot of people, but also to strike at the country’s ideology.”

  “True.”

  “So—it’s Columbus Day weekend, right? Maybe they’ll hit parades or parades going over bridges, something like that.”

  “By that reasoning, then I like the George Washington bridge,” Kim said.

  “Hmm.” Lex nodded agreement. “That’s a possibility. It also has a double tier structure, which would make it easier to do real damage—the vehicles on the lower level blow, which blows upward, then the weight comes down and knocks things loose in a downward motion.”

  “And it’s New York again,” Kim added. “The double whammy.”

  “Right.” Scott frowned. “That’s just a guess—we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, just in case it isn’t right.”

  “No, I think it might be the George Washington bridge. Just a gut feeling,” Kim said.

  Scott said, “Oh, yeah? Your secret source backs me up, huh?”

  Kim shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Keep telling you…”

  “Secret source?” Lex asked, perking up.

  “He’s full of it,” Kim said.

  “Nah, Lex. She has like a secret identity, and there’s some big secret society.”

  “Is that right?” Lex watched her a little too closely.

  Kim grabbed a stack of papers. “I guess my secret is out—I’m really the Green Flashlight, cousin to the Green Lantern. In my off-hours, I wear a skintight—”

  “Ooh, I like that idea.”

  “—gown with green shoes, and it gives me special powers so I can go out and bring back Truth, Justice and the American Way.” She rolled her eyes. “Please.” Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was nearly noon. Tory would be arriving soon and Kim wanted to look her best. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’ve got a media interview to take.”

  Scott chuckled. “I’ll make the phone calls to th
e CIA this time, huh?”

  “With my blessing,” Kim said. “Can you imagine what he’ll be like now that I was right again?”

  “Maybe he’ll lighten up.”

  “Right. Lex, of course you can take the FBI. I’ll call the guy on the NYPD.”

  “What guy?” Scott asked.

  “The old policeman, the one in New York City.” Too late, Kim realized she’d taken that information from Oracle. Heat threatened to spill into her face, and she could not give herself away like that. Covering as fast as she could, she shook her head. “It must not have been you I discussed this with. Maybe it was Diana. Last night on the phone.”

  Lex and Scott both sat at the table and just looked at her, the Snow White and Rose Red of big tough guys, one so blond and sturdy and outdoorsy Colorado, the other dark and lean and severe. “No secret society, huh?” Lex said.

  “No secret code?” Scott added.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She grabbed her papers and took off. “See you guys later.”

  Chapter 16

  Kim first dialed the policeman in New York City, Karl Gibson. She asked for him, gave her name and was put through immediately. He picked up. “Gibson.”

  She introduced herself and explained the situation. “I’m looking for any clues, any ideas, any information that might help us piece together where these guys are gonna strike next.”

  “All right. What can I tell you?”

  Kim was not entirely certain why Oracle had told her to call the policeman, so she winged it. “Have you arrested or had contact with any Berzhaan rebels or Keminis or anything related to them in the past few weeks?”

  “We did,” he said. “We had a tip that there was a group centered around a tire shop near the George Washington bridge. We paid ’em a visit and found a whole lot of explosives.”

  “Really. A tire center?”

  “Yeah. Let’s see if I can get you the name.”

  Kim waited, pencil poised above her paper. He said, “Here it is—Hafiz abu Malik Abd-Humam.”